No I haven't heard of them either. I thought they were pushing it with Thor but now that Marvel have run out of characters that people have heard of, they are working their way through the ones only the geeks know. Yes, of course, you're skeptical but it just means that they have really had to make an effort with this one. It's not like they can just swing Spider-man around some buildings every other year knowing you're guaranteed an audience. This time Marvel have turned out a film that is a desperate-to-please comic space opera; Star Wars given a coating of Ghostbusters irreverence and set to a Tarantino-esque soundtrack.

The film offers two major pluses. Firstly, it's a Marvel movie where you don't go in already knowing more or less what is likely to happen. Secondly, it isn't another superhero tale. Here we are in the realms of comic space opera and these Guardians are a misfit group of space bandits including a tree creature (Diesel), a wisecracking raccoon (Cooper), an eloquent strong man with no comprehension of metaphor (Bautista), and a green skinned girl (Saldana.) who looks likes she's wandered in from the closing credits of Star Trek. Only the central figure is human, Peter Quill aka Star-lord (Pratt), who was abducted from Earth in 1988 when he was a child. Since then he has turned himself into an intergalactic criminal and adventurer.

Chris Pratt? A film about comic book characters nobody knows is one thing; giving the lead to a half name like Pratt is a mighty dare. Casting Downey Jr as Iron Man was a bold move at the time, but not as much as this. His career so far has varied between hired muscle roles in films like Zero Dark Thirty and comic best friend roles, such as for Vince Vaughn in The Delivery Man. (Plus this year he voiced the lead in The Lego Movie.) His profile though is an exact fit for the role. Quill is a chancer trying to convince people that he is a bigger deal than he really is: in other words a support player trying to pass himself as a leading man. And during the film he discovers that he has more depth and heroism than he may have believed possible, he becomes Star-lord and Pratt may well emerge from the movie a genuine star.

Quill's most precious possessions are a Walkman and the mix tape his mother made for him. This selection of songs provide the soundtrack of the movie. So, as we skip from space battle to space station to space prison, rather than have some orchestra swirling away inspirationally, we hear 10cc's I'm Not In Love or The Pina Colada Song. The choice of Blue Swede's Hooked On A Feeling, forever associated with Reservoir Dogs, is a cheap trick but an effective one. For all the laugh out loud moments and spectacular visuals, it is the music that really hooks you. It gives it an intimacy and helps forge a personal investment with the big budget mayhem on screen.

(Summer blockbusters are supposed to be for youngsters but this one has a cosy familiarity that feels aimed at the middle aged. The music is nostalgic and the visuals remind you of panels of childhood comic books. )

I have some quibbles. Quill is supposed to have had no connection with the earth since 1988 but a lot of his slang and attitude seems way more contemporary than that. More importantly, the effect of him being the only human being in this universe is rather lost if almost every other character uses the same idiomatic English and has the same casual, irreverent attitude. It's also a bit of a drag that having assembled such a high quality cast, most of them are hidden under masks and make up. Cooper and Diesel are voice over artists (Diesels only gets the one line “I am Groot” - it's like George Clooney voicing a dog on South Park.) Karen Gillan is just about identifiable as Nebula but only by a process of elimination: halfway through you have concluded that it must be her.